An oblique view of Webster Hall. And is that a bus coming toward us? Yes, it is.
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Webster Hall from the Corner of Dithridge Street
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Gargoyles of St. Paul’s
Look for them on the Fifth Avenue front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland.
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Roof Ornaments, Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
Above, the distinctive grotesque eruption at the pinnacle of the pyramid roof. Below, the alternating eagles and torches of the cornice.
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Negley-Gwinner-Harter House, Shadyside
This Second Empire mansion had a narrow escape: the third floor burned out in 1987, and the owner died the next year, leaving the house a derelict hulk. It was rescued from demolition at the last minute by serial restorationist Joedda Sampson, who painted it in her trademark polychrome style; it has since passed to other owners, whose pristine white also works well with the design. The house was built in 1871; Frederick Osterling worked on early-twentieth-century renovations and additions.
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Third Presbyterian Church, Shadyside
The “chocolate church” at Fifth and Negley was designed by Theophilus P. Chandler Jr., whose name always sounds to old Pa Pitt like the villain in a Marx Brothers farce. Chandler worked mostly in Philadelphia, but he also designed First Presbyterian downtown and the Duncan mausoleum in the Union Dale Cemetery.
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Willis McCook Mansion, Shadyside
You can make good money as a lawyer if you make the right contacts. Willis McCook was lawyer to the robber barons, and he lived among them in this splendid Gothic mansion on the Fifth Avenue millionaires’ row. The architects were the local firm of Carpenter & Crocker. It is now a hotel called the “Mansions on Fifth,” along with the house around the corner that McCook built for his daughter and son-in-law.
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Litchfield Towers, Oakland
Two of the three cylindrical skyscraper dormitories poetically named A, B, and C by the University of Pittsburgh, but popularly known as Ajax, Bab-O, and Comet.
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Buses on Fifth Avenue
Old Pa Pitt is a transit extremist. He believes in a subway between downtown and Oakland, and nothing less. But the “bus rapid transit” now in progress will certainly be an enormous improvement over what we have now, which is herds of buses getting stuck in inbound Fifth Avenue traffic. Here we see them piled up in front of the fancy new Atwood Street station.
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Central Catholic High School
A kind of cartoon castle, the main building of Central Catholic is technically in Squirrel Hill, though most Pittsburghers would probably say “Oakland.” The building was put up in 1927; the architect was Edward J. Weber.
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View Down Fifth Avenue in Oakland
Decades from now, some curious soul exploring the back corners of archived Internet content will come across this picture and spin an elaborate theory of exactly what it was we were going to get through together. Possibly Fifth Avenue traffic, which is unusually moderate in this picture, but minutes later was brought to a standstill by a truck that decided to stop diagonally across the entire boulevard and unload its cargo.
